The Bayou Pierre settlement [BP] is the hamlet now known as Carmel. It
is located at 250 feet of elevation, well up into the hills, about two
miles west of the closest point on Bayou Pierre Lake. This makes sense.
A location right on the lake/swamp would have been highly flood-prone
and unhealthy. The bayou itself was a stagnant, cypress-clogged
ancestral stream channel and backwater of the Red River that was
unsuitable for navigation. Haggard tells us that BP was connected to
both Natchitoches and Nacogdoches with roads. Roads followed the higher
ground whenever possible.
The settlement retained the name "Bayou Pierre" well into the postbellum
era. In April 1888, Father Anastasius Peters led a community of German
Carmelite monks from Marienfeld (now Stanton), Texas, to Bayou Pierre to
establish a monastery northeast of the settlement. He was appointed
postmaster of the US Post Office at Bayou Pierre, and he succeeded in
getting its name changed to "Carmel" the following year. At one time,
there were 31 monks and three nuns, operating schools for both boys and
girls. The wooden church, monastery, convent, and schools were
destroyed in an unfortunate trash-burning accident in 1904, leaving a
small stone chapel as the only tangible modern evidence of the religious
community's presence. See pretty photos of the restored "Rock Chapel"
at
http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=137093 , but pay no
attention to the lady's 1856 dating of its construction. All other
sources are in agreement that it should be 1891.
If you will go to the topo map at
http://tinyurl.com/z6c8b , you will
find Carmel near its southwest corner. To Carmel's northeast is the
Immaculate Conception Church, built subsequent to the demise of the
monastery and no longer in operation today. A half-mile north of this
church is the Rock Chapel. If you will click TerraServer one interation
east, you will find the swamp known as Bayou Pierre Lake poking under
Interstate 49 and coming to its westernmost point (and its point closest
to Carmel) at the section number "37."
Therefore, I nominate that point as best fitting Salcedo's words, "along
this bayou to the west bank of Bayou Pierre Lake at Bayou Pierre
settlement." You will find it at the red cursor and can read its
coordinates on the TopoZone map at
http://tinyurl.com/koe5o .
I will leave it to you to redraw the line from here to the Logansport
confluence and refine the notional tripoint if you are so disposed.
Lowell G. McManus
Leesville, Louisiana, USA